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The Army is rapidly developing small, first-person-view drones — the same kind that have proven devastatingly effective in Ukraine — and envisions a future where “every infantryman will have a drone with them,” according to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
“We’re doing essentially a call to arms where we are ingesting the lessons being learned in Ukraine,” Driscoll told a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference. “Ukraine was able to take out almost $10 billion worth of Russian equipment with $100,000 worth of drones.”
He added that the Army’s elite units are already planning around drones for every mission. “When you meet with our lead units like the Ranger Regiment or Delta Force,” he said, “they envision drones being a core part of every action they do.”
The remarks came during AUSA’s annual conference in Washington, where hundreds of Army leaders met with defense executives showcasing the latest battlefield technology. The event — one of the Army’s largest industry gatherings — almost didn’t happen this year amid the government shutdown.
ARMY PUSHES BATTLEFIELD AI AS COUNTER-DRONE FIGHT TAKES CENTER STAGE
A Ukrainian serviceman inspects a first-person-view drone provided by the Come Back Alive foundation to a Ukrainian Airborne Brigade amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine in Kyiv on Feb. 14, 2024. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters/File photo)
AUSA stepped in with a $1 million donation to cover travel costs and fly in Army officers from around the world, allowing the service to continue its meetings with industry and push ahead on modernization plans.
Driscoll said the Army sees drones and counter-drones as “different sides of the same coin,” noting that future soldiers will need to be proficient at both. “You can’t really defend against one without being an expert in the other,” he said.
The service is also developing defensive networks that merge sensors and interceptors to protect key assets from aerial threats. “We’re using new technologies like drones to create a sensing layer that, paired with interceptors, will essentially allow us to build mini ‘Iron Domes’ over protected assets,” Driscoll said.
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Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (Spc. Luke Sullivan/75th Ranger Regiment)
He described this “drone-pervasive” vision as part of a sweeping modernization campaign that spans artificial intelligence, industrial reform, and energy resilience — all of which, he said, are necessary for the Army to operate in contested environments such as the Indo-Pacific.
In a separate but related effort, Driscoll and Energy Secretary Chris Wright unveiled the Janus Program, a next-generation energy initiative that would place small nuclear microreactors at Army bases across the United States. The goal: make installations self-sufficient in power and less dependent on vulnerable fuel convoys or overseas supply chains.
“These reactors will be commercially built and operated,” Driscoll said, “and they’ll give us the ability to provide resilient, secure, round-the-clock power at our most critical installations.”
ARMY’S NUCLEAR COMEBACK: SWEEPING NEW PROGRAM AIMS TO BREAK ‘TYRANNY OF FUEL’ AT BASES ACROSS THE GLOBE
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll briefed reporters on Army modernization. (Cheriss May/Getty Images )
Wright said the program aims to replicate the reliability of nuclear propulsion in Navy submarines. “These engines are installed, they run the life of the submarine without refueling,” he said. “That changed the game for our Navy. And I think we can do the same thing for our Army with small reactors that can be deployed in all different settings.”
The Janus reactors, which will be developed in partnership with the Department of Energy, are designed to be small and transportable. Driscoll said each would be shielded with armor-grade materials — “the same material you put around a tank” — and protected by the same layered sensor and drone network envisioned for base defense.
One of the biggest hurdles to scaling microreactors is uranium enrichment. The reactors require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) — a higher concentration of uranium-235 than is currently produced for civilian use.
(Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters)
“Nobody produces it today,” Wright told reporters. “Congress allocated some money a couple of years ago, but it’s been sat on too long. We’ll be giving awards to accelerate the rise of American-owned enrichment capacity in America.”
Wright said the goal is to restore the domestic uranium supply chain and eliminate reliance on foreign sources. “We built 100 reactors quickly, providing 20 percent of U.S. electricity — and then it stagnated for decades,” he said. “Now nuclear provides around 5 percent of global energy output. This is deeply disappointing.”
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Safety and security will be top concerns as the Army moves forward. “From a cyber perspective, no one is going to allow a nuclear reactor that is remotely operated,” Dr. Jeff Waksman, the Army official in charge of the Janus Program, said. “They’ll be connected by fiber optic — there’s no remote operation possibility.”
Waksman added that the reactors’ small size and design make them unattractive proliferation targets. The goal of the project is an eventual global scale, but for now, “these will be in the 50 U.S. states, not deployed to the front,” he said. “They’re small targets, with very small amounts of material inside.”
